Saul, who changed his name to Paul, was born at Tarsus in Cilicia, a city which prided itself upon its good education. The language of the city was Greek; Saul's father was a Jew and a Roman citizen. He was trained at Jerusalem by {119} Gamaliel, a renowned Pharisee. The future apostle was therefore born a member of the most religious race in the world, spoke the language of the most cultivated race in the world, and lived under the most masterly and fully organized government. All these three influences left their mark on a soul which was always impressible towards everything great and noble. But his nature was not only impressible; it was endowed as well by God with a strong pure heat which could fuse truths together into an orderly and well-proportioned form, and purge away the falsehoods which clung to truths. It is plain that he was not a Pharisee of the baser sort, even when he believed that the Messiah was a pretender. Righteousness was his ideal, and because he hated sin, a struggle raged between his conscience and his lower instincts (Rom. vii. 7-25). He fiercely persecuted the Christians, whom he regarded as traitors to their race and their religion. On his way from Jerusalem to Damascus with a warrant from the high priest to arrest the Christians, he was converted (about A.D. 35) by a direct interposition of the risen Lord. Every effort has been made by modern rationalists to explain this revelation as either an imaginary vision or an inward light in his conscience. The fact remains that St. Paul never speaks of it as a merely inward reality, that he does not number his conversion among the ecstatic states to which he was subject (2 Cor. xii. 1), and that he reckons the appearance of Christ to himself as an outward appearance like the appearances to the older apostles (1 Cor. xv. 5-8). We cannot get behind the statements made by St. Paul and those made in Acts by his friend, St. Luke. They show that he was met and conquered by Christ. The appearance of Christ changed his whole career, transformed his character, convinced him that Jesus was the Messiah, and that salvation can only be obtained by faith in Him--that is, by a devoted adherence to His Person and His teaching. After preaching Christ in Damascus, he retired into the keen air and inspiring solitude of the Arabian desert. {120} During this period the outline of his creed seems to have grown clear and definite. It afterwards expanded and developed, as truly as youth passes into manhood, but there is no evidence for any material alteration having taken place after his return from Arabia. Many Christians doubted the sincerity of his conversion, but St. Barnabas, a conciliatory and kind evangelist, introduced him to St. Peter and St. James at Jerusalem, A.D. 38. His life being threatened by the Greek-speaking Jews, he departed for Tarsus. In due time he was brought by St. Barnabas to aid the new mission to the Gentiles at